Who to chase

[Cakewalk7]

Sorry if this is a silly question...we are selling and buying at the moment. In a chain of 4 houses I believe, sold ours and offer accepted on our onward purchase around 4 weeks ago.

Who should I be chasing and what am I expecting to happen next?

Not sure where we are with our buyer - our solicitor has sent draft contracts to her solicitor but no other updates - who should give us those? EA? Her solicitor? Our solicitor? Haven't heard about any surveys yet or her mortgage approval.

Where do I go to find updates of further up the chain? Our vendors EA?

All seems very confusing!

Yes. The EA on your buyer, and the next EA up on your sellers. Your solicitor generally has updates etc from both, but it's often like getting blood out of a stone.

The EA's usually have a 'post-sales' team who chase all the solicitors in a chain for updates etc. However they are generally shit and dont do a great job. I would speak to your solicitor and find out what is outstanding from who, and then go back to the EA to get them to chase the other solicitors from the buyers/sellers. Your solicitor should also be chasing, but with lots of clients they generally arent great at that unless you keep pressure on them and ask for regular updates. It should just all happen stress free for you by solicitor and EA but it doesnt unless you push!

A key thing to find out is whether the chain is fully formed. All the EA in the chain should have sales progressors doing this. Many people don't commit to survey costs etc. until chain is fully formed.

Even then, there are many reasons why a chain won't in the end complete, so be prepared for that right up to exchange.

In our first chain last year we were told chain was all formed. However, the solicitor for the vendor of the property we were buying did not respond or return paperwork. After about two months of chasing and then speaking to her EA we sussed that she was using the fact she was under offer to put 'low ball' offers on different properties while making sure she incurred minimal legal costs in respect of 'selling' hers.

Eventually the chain fell through as our FTBs mortgage offer expired and they could not afford the higher rates that came in.

Managed to find a new buyer and new onward purchase months later and all worked out in the end (except for £2k loss on original property for legal costs etc.).

We deliberately used the same EA as our seller but they have a good reputation too. So they dealt with everything and kept slow solicitors on their toes. From offer to completion has been 3 months despite very, very slow clueless buyers.

You chase your solicitor or EA and they chase everyone else!